The Pool Party Panic

Maya's thumbs moved across her iphone screen like she was defusing a bomb. She wasn't. She was just refreshing Instagram for the third time in two minutes, because apparently that's what you do when you're standing at the edge of a pool party where you know exactly three people and one of them was your cousin who'd dragged you here.

The hat was pulling double duty today—hiding the mess she'd made of her hair with that DIY dye job last night (note: blue doesn't wash out, it just fades into a weird greenish-gray tragedy), and shielding her eyes from having to make awkward eye contact with anyone who might approach. She'd been there twenty minutes and already accidentally made sustained contact with four different people.

"Maya! Get in here!" her cousin Jordan yelled from the middle of the pool, splashing water everywhere like an overexcited golden retriever.

"Maybe later!" she called back, immediately opening a random app just to look busy. This was fine. This was normal. She was totally fine standing by the snack table alone, pretending to be fascinated by a group chat she'd muted weeks ago.

Then it happened. The universal signal of teenage doom: someone nudged her elbow, and suddenly her iphone was doing a graceful swan dive into the chlorinated depths below.

The new guy—Liam, whose name she'd learned five seconds ago when he'd said "oh shoot"—was already halfway into the pool before her brain processed what had happened. His hand broke the surface, fumbling around until he emerged, dripping wet, holding her phone like it was some precious archaeological discovery.

"I am so sorry," he said, shoving his wet hair out of his eyes. "My elbow has a mind of its own sometimes."

Maya stared. His hair was messed up too—kind of a lot, actually—and he was standing there dripping pool water onto the concrete, and for some reason she reached up and pulled off her hat.

"It's whatever," she said, and something about the way his eyes widened slightly made her realize she didn't even care about the greenish-blue disaster on her head anymore. "My phone's probably dead anyway. Jordan's been trying to push me in all afternoon. You just beat her to it, sort of."

Liam laughed, and Maya felt something unclench in her chest that had been tight all day.

"Well," he said, "since I'm already soaked and your phone's probably having an existential crisis, want to just jump in properly? Like, with intention this time?"

Maya looked at her cousin, who was now watching them with undisguised interest from the pool. She looked at her hat in her hand. She looked at Liam, who was waiting for her answer like it actually mattered.

"Yeah," she said, and for the first time all day, she actually meant it. "Yeah, let's do it."